NASA LDSD Test Success

NASA LDSD Test Success

The Low-Density Supersonic Decelerator (LDSD) launched yesterday by balloon from the US Navy’s Pacific Missile Range Facility in Kauai, Hawaii.

The balloon was launched at 08:45 local HST and by 11:05 HST the test vehicle was released at an altitude of 120,000 feet or 36.6 km. The decent took a half hour and the est vehicle hardware, black box data recorder and parachute were all recovered later in the day.

This first of three test planned tests designed to determine the flying ability of the vehicle and it also deployed two new landing technologies as a bonus.

The test apparently went very well:

“Because our vehicle flew so well, we had the chance to earn ‘extra credit’ points with the Supersonic Inflatable Aerodynamic Decelerator [SIAD],” said Ian Clark, principal investigator for LDSD at JPL. “All indications are that the SIAD deployed flawlessly, and because of that, we got the opportunity to test the second technology, the enormous supersonic parachute, which is almost a year ahead of schedule.”